Memorabilia
by Black Jester
Summary: One-shot, Turk-sequence part IV. "People say that a man who kills for money sees things differently from others."


The last in the Turk-sequence, with the turn finally having come to Tseng. I don't really like how this one came out; the concept is alright, but there's something about the characterisation and the wording that irks me. Unfortunately, I can't tell what it is. Perhaps you can.

Disclaimer; I do not own any of the characters or placenames depicted in this story – they belong to Square-Enix, and I am making no money from this work of fiction.

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People say that a man who kills for money sees things different from other people. One of these differences is that he sees other people as things.

Of course, what _people _say is often a pack of lies, as opposed to what the _individual _says, but sometimes even people are right, and in his case, they are so close to the truth that they can almost grasp it.

He does see people as things, just not in the way that people mean. Like an old lady who always saves a bit of string because you never know when it might come in handy, he picks things up and tucks them away, in case he needs them later.

The things – items of note that no one else needs any more – are as varied as they are many. Broken bits of things that were thrown away, hidden or simply put somewhere and forgotten about. He keeps them not out of desire to preserve them, but because they have a deeper value than what meets the eye; they remind him of things he does not wish to forget.

The broken doll he has tucked away in the deepest of his desk-drawers, a pretty thing once but now made up of twisted limbs and smeared paint. At some point in time, a child's mother had made clothing for it, faded red into brown and tiny stitches, and sometimes he marvels at the narrative irony of the universe; even with the chipped paint and the faded clothing, it resembles her too much for his comfort. Not just in looks, but in manner as well – used, discarded, thrown away when the pleasure passed, just like her, with her pretty painted lips and scarlet dresses.

There are good reasons to why that particular drawer is always locked.

In the next drawer are a number of things; the clunky coffee mug Reeve got for Christmas five years ago, still with the stains inside, three bullets with names carved in the metal, a joke Heidegger had made on his first day as a Turk and that he remembers even now, a pink ribbon that belongs to a woman with eyes so kind that she could redeem the world, a ribbon he has stolen and intends to keep. Buried underneath the junk is a strip of silk the colour of the wide open sea, his name stitched in it, and he keeps it there to keep his shame alive.

Not often does the key to his desk turn in the lock to that drawer, but it happens.

The next drawer is simpler, less cluttered; bits and pieces of things that belong to those labelled terrorists. A hair-tie, a Shinra-card with a photo of a blond man with Mako-eyes, a lab-report on cloning, a shuriken, a packet of cigarettes, a piece of coal and a lock of hair so black it may as well be soaked in ink. Little things, unimportant to him but of consequence to the world, so he keeps them there, under lock and key.

The last things are not locked away, not kept out of sight in a drawer; they are strewn across the desk in a manner that may seem hap-hazard to someone else, but is a intricate pattern to his eyes. The rusted knife, nicked and dented and bent at such an angle that it was unusable, lined up to the edge of his desk. There are flecks of brown on it that aren't rust but the faded colour of dried blood, the dull edge is worn down so far that it can't cut through a loaf of bread if it tried, but he keeps it there and looks at it every day.

After all, it was his hand that wrenched it away from becoming a suicide weapon, his hands that patched up bleeding wrists and calmed a stormy mind. The very same hands that turned around and transformed a suicidal child into a ruthless killer, a blue suit the last means of protection against the world. He keeps the knife and the memories wide open on his desk, and keeps his words inside where they cannot escape, and watches the monster he created each and every day.

At one corner of the desk is a nail, driven into the wood so far that the desktop is split along, a crack as wide as the width of a hair and deeper than mere physics. Wound around the nails is a hair, red as sunsets in winter, red as dresses and painted lips, and it was his hands – then cripples from the fight and the icy cold – that wound it around the unbending iron. Yet another notch on the edge of his desk, yet another blue suit put into the world, yet another monster with eyes like Christmas-lights in summer.

The taste in his mouth now is not pride, but disappointment at the ease with which yet another name was added to the lists of the blue-suited.

The last thing is even simpler; a paper-rose, fragile and delicate, but a paradox in itself. More lasting than real flowers, and something made by human hands. It is not as tragic as the nail and the knife, but not all-sunshine either. The same shade of blue as the colour of innocence, it reminds him of the last one, the third that came after; the one that may have donned the blue suit but has not yet turned into a monster like the other two.

He has, over the years, taken poor care of his wards, has been careless with the lives entrusted to him. Slowly or quickly, he has turned them into walking blue suits, different in manner but the same in actions, and he pities them more than he does himself. He has taken away humanity and given back only cold efficiency, not because he wanted to, but because the man who pays his wages told him to.

It is not in him to dwell on things, but every day he looks at the things on his desk and reflects, knowing that the knife, the nail and the paper rose will one day be all that is left of what they were.

Until that day, he shall keep them safe.


End file.
